Brown: Cooped up amid COVID-19? Here are some great graphic reads

Sweet Tooth: This post-apocalyptic series from Southwestern Ontario’s own Jeff Lemire was one of the few comics that has forced tears from my eyes. It takes place in a world where strange animal/human hybrids have taken over.

Lemire’s scratchy lines are perfect for depicting the haunted setting. Gus, a boy with antlers, befriends Jeppard, a former hockey enforcer, as they seek answers in the spooky landscape.

Kamandi, the Last Boy on Earth: This two-volume set captures Jack Kirby’s 40-issue run on the early 1970s title. Kamandi lives in a world where beasts such as leopards, rats and dogs have evolved into human-like beings.

Kamandi may be the only rational human left alive on this cursed Earth. And one of his enemies is Morticoccus, the living germ!

Springtime in Chernobyl: This gorgeously illustrated travelogue sets forth a critical question: What do you do when you travel to the Ukraine, site of the world’s worst nuclear accident, expecting devastation, but instead find a landscape bursting with life? That’s the dilemma for French cartoonist Emmanuel Lepage.

The central struggle here is Lepage’s inner turmoil at being faced with evidence that maybe Mother Nature can withstand the worst humankind throws at her.

Hostage: If you read only one book on this list, make it Guy Delisle’s Hostage. There is perhaps no graphic novel that better illustrates the effects of prolonged isolation on the human brain.

Delisle tells the story of an NGO worker with Doctors Without Borders held captive by Chechen rebels in the Caucasus in 1997.

As the central character retreats inside himself, he reasons that his ordeal is worse than what prisoners experience — at least prisoners know when they’ll be released. Since there is no end to his captivity, he imagines great battles from history featuring figures like Napoleon to keep his mind occupied.